Off the Long Island coast, near Fire Island, the British steamer Scotland bound for Liverpool ran into the smaller vessel Kate Dyer in an evening collision.  The Kate Dyer sank in fifteen minutes and the Scotland, having saved seven of the sunken ship's twenty-man crew, tried to make it back to New York Harbor but ran aground in a sinking condition off Sandy Hook, New Jersey. (By John Osborne) 

The Brooklyn to Manhattan ferry Idaho was making a Monday evening run when it caught fire in the middle of the river.  Only around thirty people were aboard, and this helped account for the survival of everyone involved.  All the passengers and crew, thanks to heroism on the part of some and the presence of small boats in the river, were pulled from the water safely.  (By John Osborne)

The wealthy citizens of New York City's elite gave a large and ornate banquet at the Metropolitan Hotel in honor of Cyrus Field, one of their own. They were celebrating the completion just weeks before of Field's decade long effort to lay the Atlantic Cable and enable secure telegraphic communication between Europe and North America.  Toasts were made and Field gave a speech in appreciation.  (By John Osborne)

A Mason since 1843, President Andrew Johnson attended the dedication of the cornerstone of the new Masonic Temple on North Charles Street in Baltimore, Maryland. The building was completed two years later but burned down on Christmas Day, 1890.  (By John Osborne)

The new Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals continued to have an influence in New York City when the New York Police Department raided a Saturday night sporting house on Water Street that featured dog fighting and arrested its organizers. Included among those detained were Christoper Kilbourn, known locally as "Kit Burns," who was the area's notorious "sporting" entrepreneur. (By John Osborne)

Massive traffic disruptions immediately struck Broadway on a Monday morning after the Dry Dock and East Broadway Railroad Company linked Park Place to Fulton Street, across New York City's main thoroughfare in work over the weekend.  The section of Broadway between Vesey and Fulton Streets was already a bottleneck and the double line of tracks further added to the chaos there.  (By John Osborne) 

Strong winds helped produce a massive fire that destroyed large sections of the city of Quebec in Canada. Up to a third of population, as many as 20,000 people were rendered homeless when 2000 dwellings were burned.  The Lower Town was largely spared and the old wall protected the old city but recents cuts in firefighting funds were punished over much of the area.  (By John Osborne)  

Only the second Soldiers' Monument in western Massachusetts was dedicated at Stockbridge in Berkshire County on this day.  The twenty-four foot high memorial, located in the public square, bore the names of the twenty-seven men from the town who had died in the war. Governor Alexander Bulloch attended and Henry Sedgewick of New York, a relative of one of the dead, gave the oration. (By John Osborne)

The nation's two most prominent baseball clubs, the Philadelphia Athletics and the Brooklyn Atlantic, had agreed to an October series.  The first game in Philadelphia had to be abandoned when 40,000 people showed up.  The second, at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn, with 152 policemen attending, ended with a 27-17 Athletics victory. The series concluded with a third game the following week back in Philadelphia. (By John Osborne)